Oct-2017 to Mar-2018

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Amber made some fantastic chicken piri-piri the other evening.  The chickens here are so, so good, plump and tasty, not stringy and cardboard-like as in UK.  And in UK Amber buys the top (ie most expensive) quality chicken available from Waitrose.  Perhaps it is the same blinkered mentality (as occurs with the NHS), where the industry convinces itself that it is the best in the world, and it's no use telling it any different.  It may, I suppose, soon be a hate crime to criticise it.  I have noticed the same high chicken quality in Peru, even though you can see lots of factory chicken farms out in the desert (to distance themselves from disease from other chickens), and where brother-in-law's firm sells chicken feed supplements. 

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We went downstairs to the Clásico café for breakfast - freshly-squeezed orange juice, 3 media lunas (croissants) each, and café con leche.  Yum.  It was 210 pesos.  We can remember when we first came here in 2008 it was 14!

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We went to lunch at Il Sorpasso, an Italian restaurant 50m up the road, where the lady owner was so pleased to see us back that she gave us both a kiss.  We went out to the sunny patio at the back, and sat next to a group who were oddly dressed in suits, and seemed to be having some sort of a meeting, but never mind.  Then 3 of them took out 3 guitars, and the girl changed into a dress, and two others put cameras on stands, and they started to play tango beautifully for about an hour as we ate.  And a bird in the tree above kept joining in with them.  Turns out they were quite well known, and were making a demo for the Buenos Aires city authorities.  And were very happy to have us sitting so close next to them.  Typical San Telmo!  And the lunch was good too: pasta with seafood, a picada (salami, mortadella, grilled vegetables, cheese, etc), and Sauvignon Blanc.

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Being in Argentina, you get a slightly different view of UK news.  The substantive stuff seems a bit irrelevant, and the other half seems to be about people taking offence about something or other, as if that was news, and as if anyone was remotely interested.  In the good old days, there was absolutely no news about people taking offence, or about how they felt, about anything.  I have an old type-written account, several pages long, by a member of my family, of a journey by ship in 1915 from Buenos Aires to UK, which was interrupted when they were captured by a German battle-cruiser, and they transferred in mid-ocean to another ship, etc.  The curious thing about it, which you only realise after a while, is that it contains absolutely no description of how anybody felt about anything, just a factual account of what happened.  I suppose it was considered obvious that you would be pretty pissed off by what had happened, but whether anyone felt more, or less, pissed off by it than anyone else was not worth recording.  It used to be a text-book no-no for journalists to ask someone 'How does it feel?' as being stupid, boring and lazy, but now it seems to be the whole point of any news item.  The Guardian seems to contain little else!

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We went for dinner at Caseros, and sat outside.  After a while, Amber notice that 4 men sitting at a table by the window inside were showing each other mobile phone photos of old cars, including Bugattis.  I got all excited, and Amber went "No, don't!".    However, one of the men eventually came outside for a smoke.  I called him over, and yes they were into old cars, he worked with Pur Sang, the Argentine maker of reproduction old cars such as Bugattis, who have made over 200 of them, and he was their European sales manager.  One of the guys inside was a client, who had a collection of over 30 old cars, and in fact they had an office, with repro Bugattis, Alfa Romeos, Maseratis, right over the way in Caseros street.  We showed him photos of our car, and he gave us his card, and invited us enthusiastically to visit the factory in Paraná, some 300 miles north of Buenos Aires.  Only in Argentina!  Turns out he was at the meeting in Lugano where Oscar and I went in  '98, and I remember talking to him, as an Argentine, and he also remember us, for the same reason

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Went to La Usina del Arte, in Boca.  It was built in 1911 as one of the first Buenos Aires power stations, and was converted by Macri (who was then Buenos Aires mayor) to an art gallery and home for the main city symphony orchestra.  There was an exhibition of photographs by the American Lachapelle, mostly nude and mostly gay (a lot of gay stuff in Argentina).  I didn't like them, but Amber did.   I did like the architecture, though, very early 19 -hundreds Italian style, a bit Mussolini-ish.  Before we went in, however, we went to the El Obrero restaurant just up the road.  It was the main cantina for the power station workers,  and it has since become a very iconic, authentic Buenos Aires restaurant, frequented by Mick Jagger, Bono, etc, and now by us.  Only medium-sized, very Argentine, walls covered in pictures of local celebs, football shirts, and of course Maradona.  Excellent bife, excellent crisp chips (all chips in Argentina are hand, not machine, cut), excellent sorrentinos.  We forgot to order pancakes with dulce de leche, for which they are also famous.  No Americans - Boca is considered far too dangerous for them.

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We have had a new air conditioner installed, and the make is "BGH".  This stands for Boris Garfunkel and Sons (Hijos).

 

Even more revelations and wringing of hands on the BBC about historic child sex abuse, this time footballers.  I feel almost deprived.  At boarding school, with my parents thousands of miles away, I had absolutely no experience of any of it.  And I was quite a pretty boy!   One knew about it, in a jokey sort of way, but felt that if it did come up you only had to say no.  More and more I am becoming aware that my life has been sheltered and isolated.

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Next week we are off on a cruise to Malvinas, Cape Horn, Chilean Fjords, and Valparaiso!

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Here is a 3D picture of Amber, done at the Royal Academy by Factum, the organisation Oak works for:
http://ra2016.projectplay.rocks/#15367656